A total of 4,241 Cuban migrants sought refuge in Brazil between January and November 2022a record in recent years, published the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.
The local media collects data from the Observatory of International Migrations of Brazil (OBMigra), according to which Cubans were the second largest nationality in refugee applications, behind only Venezuelans.
The report provides the severe economic crisis facing Cuba as the main reason for the emigration of Cubans. It also cites statements by Human Rights Watch’s chief investigator for the Americas, Juan Pappier, who points to political repression among other human rights abuses as other reasons for people fleeing the island.
According to the Folha de Sao Paulo andThe Brazilian government has recognized 1,043 Cubans as refugeesthe majority, 843, by Afraid to express their political opinions in Cuba; another 58 for belonging to a particular social group; 15 for religious reasons and one for racial reasons.
Cuban doctors and other health professionals who abandoned their missions before, during and after the closure of the More Doctors program in 2019 under President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration acquired the Refugee status in Brazil.
The new government has announced that a “revised version” of the controversial program will be reinstated, although the professionals exported by the Cuban regime would not fill the majority of positions as in the previous version.
Cuba is experiencing the biggest migration crisis in its history. Between January 1 and November 30, 2022, 277,594 Cubans arrived in the United States, a daily average of 760. Last October, 29,872 Cubans entered the United States irregularly, an average of 963 per day. In November, 35,849 migrants arrived in the US from the island, an average of nearly 1,200 per day.